


Sunslammer Down

by VastDerp



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Paranoia, alternian biotech, helmsmen - Freeform, sunslammer down
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-05 00:02:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VastDerp/pseuds/VastDerp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The true story behind the most infamous planetside starship crash of the 44th century.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunslammer Down

The tech is an indigo and she’s continually cursing under her breath at your crew for the state of you. “Disgraceful,” she says, poking something tender with one claw. You squeeze your eyes shut. “Your service team should be thrown out the nearest airlock.”

Too late, you want to say, but you can’t make yourself speak without leave. He heard your daily maintenance technicians giggling together in the service corridor. Assumed it was about him, it’s always about him these days.The captain spaces cobalt-down without a reprimand just for looking at him funny these days. Since his moirail got culled he’s gone through enough crew that it’s getting hard to fill the jobs they leave behind, and now you’re in disrepair.

Late nights he’ll have you offline, the captain. He spills petty grudges and confidences in your ear for hours while you hang there like always, missing your data uplink, pretending to give a shit when he seems to need you to say something. Just a noise of agreement is usually enough, but sometimes he wants you to share data, and then you’re hopeless. As if you could possibly know any of the people he demands information about. When he asks “have you witnessed any incidents of sabotage?” you don’t know. “Have you heard seditious talk, who on this ship has it out for me?” You don’t know.

He never shuts the fuck up on nights like that. Forces are gathering against him, he knows it. The Empire itself is in danger. He told you about his enemies one night, but not until after he pulled out your bionic eye and gave the priority shutdown command for every external connection you had. It was horribly quiet, just him and his secret. You swore his loyalty oaths again and again until he was sure you couldn’t find a way around them. These days, you have to tell him if you have a bad dream and he’s in it.

Sometimes he shakes you, but he doesn’t hit. It’s a good thing. You’d break a bone in this state and who knows what that would do to your performance rating. You’re already low enough to require a doctor to be called in. At some point the subroutine that deals with exercising your physical body broke down. You don’t really know how long it’s been since you’ve been serviced, but the tech gives one of the arms a tug, drawing it away from your chest, and it’s stiff and it burns.

“Disgraceful,” the tech says again. “No wonder your board stats have dropped. Low-power engine like this, you have to keep up with the hardware maintenance or you might as well cull it and fly analog.”

You try not to look down, try not to peer down through any of the cameras at how everything’s twisted up on you. It’s only part of the mounting for your brain, the important bit that never rests. You usually forget it’s even there until maintenance time rolls around and you get stuck back in the flesh part of yourself, waiting to be greenlighted for another sweep, but now the schedule’s been interrupted and you do not like that at all.

“I’m going to recommend switching to holistic interface,” the tech prods something below your waist with a frown. She’s speaking through you in the otherwise empty helmsblock, trusting you to relay her words to the captain’s earpiece. He’s prowling around somewhere belowdeck (you can’t see him when you’re off the ship net like this), looking for suspicious activity that might somehow have been hidden from the thousand cameras.

You feel a terrible burning coldness in the pit of your guts when his reply is a shapeless, bored grunt in your ear.


End file.
